


all that we see or seem

by applejwoos (kenmarcadeblues)



Series: married to the music [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dimension Travel, Gen, Inspired by Music, Mark Lee (NCT)-centric, Meta, Minor Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee, Minor Mark Lee/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Song: My Van (NCT 127), Tags May Change, it's a weird mess! but it's MY weird mess!, like a lot, mv multiverse au basically, nct discography - freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-08-01 10:23:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16282820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenmarcadeblues/pseuds/applejwoos
Summary: Mark goes places, sees sights, has experiences, forms relationships; Mark lives.But it's always back to the van.Always.





	1. the entire time we're moving

Mark sleeps until he doesn’t. And too often for his liking, he wakes up in his van.

Don’t get him wrong. Referring to it as _his_ van is a coping mechanism, a mental configuration that invites some sense of control where there is none. Mark does not own this vehicle; it owns Mark.

 

Outside is not a nice place. Outside is permanently painted in shades of gray, filled with barren trees and beings that attempt to hide behind blackened bark, shadowy save for their eyes—round and uncannily white, like cursed moons. They inspire a special kind of dread in Mark, for he knows what they’re capable of.

Mark had gotten out of the van once.

“Keep driving,” he’d breathed to Taeyong after re-spawning in the backseat. The seat’s fabric soaked with sweat under the young man’s shivering form.

_Never again._

Sometimes he muses that he and Taeyong must have done unspeakable deeds in another life for God to subject them to this; other times, he forgets what a God is.

 

Taeyong is the sole other person in the van. The sole other human in this netherworld, too, as far as Mark can figure. He doesn’t know what this reality is or when exactly he began to exist in it.

Taeyong just drives and drives and drives. He mumbles, quick and low, about things which exist neither Outside nor in the van. Mark is familiar with them. He doesn’t like speaking to Mark directly but that’s no matter; there’s not much to speak of here and the mood's never right. But Mark has seen him sometimes, after arriving in a destination. And they’ve talked there, understood each other there, been almost _brothers_ there—though it’s always back to the safety belt branding itself into his skin, the tragedy of unoccupied seats beside and behind him, the back of Taeyong’s head etched into his eyelids.

_Always back to the van._

 

Mark’s destinations can’t be reached by wheels. 

And so he keeps riding until sleep cradles him in unknown promises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hearing my van changed me. reading the lyrics changed me again. and now this.


	2. empathy // vision

_Dreams are visions and nothing more. Destinations, however, are everything._

Destinations are not dreams, no matter if Mark arrives at them after closing his eyes and losing consciousness. He lives whole lives in destinations--does everything, even sleeps and dreams. And though Mark doesn’t claim to be in a position to judge what’s regular, there’s a whispery feeling in his bones confessing that a dream within a dream is too irregular to be. He chooses to believe it.

Each destination is unique, but they’re not so different from each other. The people he meets stand out the most. As of late, there’s never a time when Mark doesn’t recognize at least two people from another destination; granted, sometimes he only realizes it after he departs. They never show any signs of recognition except knowing Mark there and then. Mark pretends not to care.

There are those he can count on meeting often, like Taeyong, and those who he’s just beginning to get acquainted with, like Jungwoo. And then there’s Donghyuck.

Donghyuck is a near-constant. The boy is everywhere. The easiest classification of destinations is _Donghyuck_ or _no Donghyuck_ , and the latter category barely exists.

 

“These birds remind me of someone,” Donghyuck says in a recent world. All Mark knows of it is that they’ve grown up living inland and have run away to the seaside for a day with 5 of their closest friends—a predictable line-up of younger boys that are always accompanied by Donghyuck. This group is common and Mark has noticed he lives most simply with them.

Last time he was here, all seven of them had been caught up in a fierce basketball game at a local recreation center. Everything had been going wonderfully until he’d walked outside to get water. There, in the parking lot, sat _his van_. He sighed aloud as he realized he wouldn’t get to play until the end.

“Yeah?” Mark asks above the many squawks filling their ears.

“Yeah.” Mark turns away from cerulean waves to catch his friend’s cheeky smile. “You, because they’re so annoying.”

And Mark lets the laughter bubble up and out because even though he’s never been in this exact moment or time or place before, it’s so familiar.

_He decides he likes this one._


	3. the soft feeling that pulls me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the touch mv is johnil property, you cannot change my mind.

“Hyung...hyung…” a soft voice says as Mark’s shoulder is gently shaken. The young man stirs, opening his eyes to find Donghyuck smiling tiredly at him. “We’re here.”

Bringing a hand up to his face and trying to rub away the sleep, he sits up. His first realization is that he’s in a chair with a seatbelt. There is a seat back in front of him with a pocket of magazines on the bottom and a folded up tray table on top. To his left is a little oval window, showing black tarmac and resting airplanes in the early morning sun.

“Mm...where are we?” 

Donghyuck laughs. “Oh my god, Lee Mark, how hard did you sleep? We’ve landed in Chicago, mush-brain!”

“Alright, thanks, Hyuckie!” Mark says, only half sarcastically, and pushes the younger out of his personal space. He undoes his seat belt, stretching as much as he can in the cramped economy cabinet of the plane.

 

 

They take the subway all the way to downtown and somehow find their hotel without getting lost. Dongyhyuck barely has time to declare he’s going to take a nap before his head hits the pillow and he’s out cold.

Meanwhile, Mark cracks open his suitcase, hoping its contents can help clue him in. Johnny is from Chicago more often than not, so even if this trip does have something to do with him, it doesn’t tell Mark where he’s gone to this time.

Two sets of normal clothes: they’re not staying more than a few days. Swim trunks: Donghyuck had oogled the hotel’s pool on the way in. A tuxedo, dress shoes, hair gel, and fancy cologne: they’re attending...an _event?_

It’s confirmed when Mark unzips the smallest, flattest pocket of the bag and finds a white card embellished with pink swirls. ‘Johnny Seo and Taeil Moon request your presence at their wedding on March 29th, 2018,’ he reads, eyes widening as he lets the information sink in. And then he smiles as years and years of full-formed memories bloom in his brain.

Last Mark remembers, Johnny and Taeil had proudly showed off their matching rings at brunch, and he had been so, so happy and excited for them, despite the fact that same sex marriage isn’t legal in Korea. But it seems they decided to circumnavigate around that by getting married overseas. Sure, their union won’t be recognized when they return home—but if it means something to them, then Mark will gladly see the two as husband and husband.

In this world, Mark lives in Seoul and is in his second year of university, studying sports medicine. Admittedly his life isn’t anything special, but the people he’s close to give it meaning.

He has eight best friends who, after they all attended his 19th birthday party, started to take a liking to one other.

Donghyuck was the first friend Mark made after moving to Korea when he was six years old. Then came Jaehyun and Doyoung, the neighbor’s kids at his childhood home; they treated him like a younger brother until they left for college. He met Yuta while participating in a university program to help foreign transfers, and Sicheng was Mark’s assigned student. Johnny was shouting at a concert and Mark, a little drunk at that point, had been happy to find another native English speaker; he somehow managed not to scare the older man off and to get his number. And Taeil? Well, as far as Mark knew, in this reality there was no Johnny without Taeil. They were a package deal, simple as that.

Over the course of two years, the nine of them have formed a unit. They try to meet up as much as possible, but when they can’t their groupchat is always annoyingly active, closing the distance between them.

 

_Ping!_

 

Mark fumbles around for his phone.

 

**Jojo-hyung** :

Hey, good morning!! Did you guys get in okay?

 

He jumps a bit at a particularly loud snore from Donghyuck.

 

**Mark** :

Gm :) yeah we’re fine, just tired lol

 

**Jojo-hyung** :

Aww haha, jetlag’s a bitch…

Anyways just wanted to remind you to come to brunch in an hour so we can go over stuff for tmrw

 

**Mark** :

Yep we’ll be there!

 

Mark’s thumb barely hits send before he’s bounding off to the shower. (He wakes Donghyuck after he gets out, feeling bad for the younger boy who probably hadn’t gotten any sleep at all during their flights.)

 

 

They exit the lobby’s wide doors and are greeted by skyscrapers, cloudy skies, and the boisterous noises of an American metropolis. But Donghyuck is engulfed in looking up directions to the restaurant. “Hm...okay, so it’s pretty close, I think…you could drive the rental without getting lost, maybe.” Mark huffs in mock offense until a familiar looking vehicle whizzes past on the street in front of them.

His smile drops.

_Why now?_ Mark internally laments for the nth time. Too often he’s ripped away from a destinations at an inconvenient time, and even more often, there is no convenient time because Mark would stay if he could choose. But he isn’t privileged enough to be offered reason or choice.

 

_Back to the van._


End file.
